Lawyers for CBS News are rebuffing a legal threat from Donald Trump over the network’s “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, telling the former president his demands are based on a “faulty premise.”
In a blunt letter to Trump’s legal counsel, the network on Wednesday said the First Amendment “fiercely protects” the editorial judgments made by “60 Minutes,” the network’s flagship newsmagazine.
“For that reason,” CBS said, Trump has no legal basis to sue, “and I note that you do not identify one,” the letter from CBS News senior Vice President for legal affairs Gayle C. Sproul stated. “Nor is there any legal basis for your demand that we provide you with the unedited transcript of the interview, which we decline to do.”
The interview in question is Bill Whitaker’s sit-down earlier this month with Trump’s opponent, Vice President Harris. When Trump backed out of a planned interview with “60 Minutes,” CBS went ahead with its plans to interview Harris and produced a Trump-less prime time special on October 7.
Observers subsequently noticed that CBS had aired two different answers from Harris to a question about why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is not listening” to the United States.
In a preview of the interview on the Sunday morning program “Face the Nation,” Harris was seen responding to the question by defending America’s influence and advocacy. In the actual “60 Minutes” segment on Monday, she was seen answering by saying “we are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
In its letter Wednesday, CBS said that the entirety of Harris’ answer has been broadcast. The first half aired on Sunday and the second half of her answer aired on Monday – two parts of the same answer to the same question. Still, the fact that two different clips aired on different days undermined the network’s argument that this was a routine editing decision and sowed distrust of “60 Minutes.”
In the weeks since the interview, Trump and his allies have vociferously accused CBS of manipulating the interview and covering up for Harris. Her answer was “grossly incompetent,” Trump said at a rally on Monday. “They removed the entire answer and put another answer in there.”
That same day, an attorney representing Trump, Edward Andrew Paltzik, sent a letter to CBS threatening a possible lawsuit. Paltzik alleged that CBS “intentionally misled the public by broadcasting a skillfully edited interview” that was “aimed at causing confusion among the electorate regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s abilities, intelligence, and appeal.”
Paltzik’s letter was clearly political in nature, charging that Harris gave a “word salad” answer to Whitaker and calling the network’s conduct “deceptive.” He said “we therefore demand that you immediately provide and publicly release the full, unedited transcript” and “preserve all communications and documents” relating to the interview.
In a two-page response obtained by CNN, Sproul wrote on Wednesday that Paltzik’s letter was “based on the faulty premise that ’60 Minutes distorted its interview” with Harris “in order to present her in a positive light.”
Sproul said “the interview was not doctored” and the newsmagazine “did not hide any part of the Vice President’s answer to the question at issue.”
Sproul also cited case law that defends editing and news judgments. “Editing is a necessity for all broadcasters to enable them to present the news in the time available, and that is what ’60 Minutes’ did here, as it does with its other reports,” she wrote.
Since Paltzik made document-preservation claims that could foreshadow a lawsuit, Sproul made her own such claims in response, indicating that CBS would vigorously defend itself if necessary.
From the network’s point of view, caving to Trump’s demands to see the unedited interview transcript would break with precedent, suggesting that a powerful politician can bully a news organization into doing whatever he wants.
But the fact that CBS has continued to rebuff his demand suggests the network will likely continue to be a target of the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump has brought up “60 Minutes” on the campaign trail at least a dozen times in the past two weeks and has repeatedly asserted that CBS should lose its broadcast license. While the network is not licensed by the FCC, local stations are, and a Trump-aligned group has filed an FCC complaint against the network’s local station in New York, WCBS, over the editing.
The complaint is unlikely to result in any action, however, because stations enjoy robust First Amendment protections.
